


If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane

by WildWolf25



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bonding, Family, Fluff, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Homesickness, Shiro only pops in for a bit at the end, a dash of humor because I'm me, platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 06:20:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11156034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildWolf25/pseuds/WildWolf25
Summary: Sleepless nights and homesickness are not uncommon for the paladins.  Sometimes the best cure is adopting each other as surrogate siblings.





	If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane

**Author's Note:**

> The story has nothing to do with Jimmy Buffet. I just really like the line "if we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane" and it fit with the vibe of the story. 
> 
> Also since we have zero information on Shiro's backstory pre-Kerberos I took liberties.

Lance had always been a big believer in staying hydrated.  It helped keep the skin clear, not to mention it was important when you spent the majority of the time breathing recycled oxygen like they did living on the castle-ship in the middle of space.  The castle-ship had a great system, but the air was always a little dry, so drinking a lot of water was important.  Even the water was synthetically-created and recycled, but it did the trick just fine, even if it tasted a little weird.  

Unfortunately, Lance was not the best at thinking ahead.  Forethought may not be his strongest suit, but he was very good at using his quick-thinking skills to take things as they come.  Sometimes, this was really great, like when he was maneuvering his lion in battle or thinking up a new plan on the fly.  Sometimes, though, it wasn’t so great, like when he drank a huge glass of water fifteen minutes before going to bed and woke up in the middle of the night.  

“Message from present-me to past-me: you are an idiot.”  Lance muttered, yawning into his hand as he slipped out of bed.  The floor was cold under his bare feet and he quickly stepped into his blue lion slippers and shuffled out of his room.  After he finished up in the bathroom, he was on his way back down the hallway when he noticed a faint light coming from the open doorway at the end, where the room with the couches was.  Was someone up, at this hour?  Wasn’t it, like, two-thirty, three AM, Castle-Ship Time?  Whoever it was, he didn’t want them collapsing from exhaustion tomorrow during training.  

He poked his head through the doorway and found that it was Pidge who was the little night-owl (not surprising, as usually one of them caught the green paladin up working late on some project or other).  He opened his mouth to tell them to go to bed, then stopped when he saw what they were doing.  They weren’t staying up late to work on code or programing robots or whatever like he originally thought.  They were just sitting on the floor with their back pressed to the couch, hugging their knees, with a blanket wrapped around their shoulders.  Their computer was in front of them, the glowing screen illuminating the otherwise dark room, but rather than being full of numbers or Galra text, there was just a picture.  Lance recognized Pidge’s brother Matt from the other photograph he had seen of the two of them, and standing next to him was Pidge, albeit with longer hair pulled back in a ponytail.  Behind them was a man and a woman who must have been their parents; the woman had the same auburn hair and hazel eyes as her children, and the man had the same cat-like curl to his smile that Pidge had.  Lance thought he recognized the man from the pictures of the Kerberos mission.  They were standing on what looked like the summit of a mountain, red-brown rocks all around them and a brilliant blue sky behind them, and they all looked sweaty and tired but incredibly proud, grinning triumphantly at the camera.

Pidge sniffled quietly and rubbed their sweater sleeve over their eyes, and Lance felt his heart break.  

“Pidge?” He called softly, walking towards them.  “You okay?”  It was a dumb question; clearly they weren’t.  Lance knew if they were anything like him, they were probably a wreck inside, caught up in memories and worries and homesickness and fear that they might never see their family again.  

“Yeah, ‘m fine.”  Pidge quickly wiped away their tears and sat up a little straighter, pulling the act back in place.  It was an act he knows all too well.

“You’re lying, aren’t you?”  He said softly, sitting down next to them.  Pidge said nothing for several long moments, then nodded wordlessly and buried their face in their drawn-up knees.  He slid an arm around their shoulders, rubbing their opposite arm.  “You’re worried about them.”  He said, looking at the photograph on the laptop screen.  

“What if I never find them?”  Pidge asked, voice watery.  “Or what if I do find them, but they’re dead?  What if they already died and I’m out here searching for people who are already gone?  And I left Earth so unexpectedly… did the Garrison even tell our families they chased us away from that ship and that we haven’t been seen since?  Or did they tell them we died?  What if my mom thinks I’m dead?  I have no way to contact her… What if she thinks her  _ whole family  _ is  _ dead _ ?”

Lance didn’t know what to say.  They had no way to know what the Garrison had told their families.  For all he knew, his family might believe he was dead, killed in some freak accident.  He wouldn’t put it past the Garrison to spin some story about how the three of them were out during a lockdown, breaking the rules, and it had somehow gotten them all killed.  Iverson would have probably gotten a kick out of slandering them even as he told their death story.  His family might believe he was dead, for all he knew, but at least he knew that they were likely still alive, unless there had been a hurricane or a fire or some other horrific accident that he didn’t let himself think about.  Pidge didn’t even have the small luxury of probable safety for most of their family; they really had no idea what their father and brother were going through, but if it was anything like what Shiro had, that alone was enough to keep them awake at night worrying.  

“We’ll find them, Pidge.”  Lance said, hugging them from the side.  “They’ll be okay.”  

“Now who’s lying?”  Pidge muttered, morose.  

“I prefer to think of it as optimism.”  Lance said.  His smile slipped a couple of notches.  “If I didn’t think that way, I’d probably go insane.”  He added quietly.

Pidge picked their head up and nodded in agreement.  “Pretty bleak, huh?  All we have left is hope.”  

“And semi-magical flying robot cats.  Can’t forget those.”  Lance pointed out.  Pidge exhaled sharply through their nose; not quite a laugh.  

“Hope, some robot lions, and some questionable Galra encoded data that  _ might  _ contain some clues or could turn out to be useless.  Sounds great.”  Pidge sighed.  “Speaking of that, I should probably end my little pity party and get back to work on decoding that.”  They reached for their laptop.

“Nuh-uh-uh, oh no you don’t,” Lance closed his fingers around their wrist, stopping them.  “Exhausted Pidges need to go to sleep, not stay up all night slowly murdering their eyesight staring at a screen in the dark.”  

“So turn on the light when you leave.”  Pidge told him.  

“I think you missed the important part of that sentence.”  Lance said.  “You need to  _ sleep _ , Pidge.  Rest your little genius brain, rest your eyes, rest your body.”

“You’re not my mom.”  Pidge snapped.

“No, but I’m the closest thing you have until you get back to Earth.”  Lance reminded them.  “And you’re the closest thing I have to a little sibling out here, and I do not let my little siblings neglect proper self-care.” 

“Self-care is drinking six Red Bulls behind a Denny’s and getting in a fist-fight with God.”  Pidge muttered.  

“Self-care is going the quiznak to sleep and stop quoting memes.”  Lance told them.  

“You can’t make me.”  

Oh, now  _ there’s  _ a familiar phrase.  Lance arched an eyebrow.  “I have two older siblings and three younger siblings.  Don’t doubt my abilities.”  With that, he grabbed them around the waist and fell sideways, dragging them down with him.  Pidge let out a yelp and tried to squirm away, but Lance just pinned them down by throwing an arm and a leg over them.  

“Lance!  Get off!”  

“Mmm, nope.  Sleepy time, nighty-night.”  Lance smiled, closing his eyes.  

“Off!  Now!”  Pidge somehow managed to sit up and was trying to push his leg off of where it was pinning theirs down. 

“Oh no!”  Lance cried dramatically, grabbing them around the shoulders and pulling them down again.  “Gravity is increasing on me!”

“No it isn’t, you nerd!”

“Is too, Pidgey.  Same thing happened yesterday.”  He hugged them tightly so they couldn’t escape.  

Pidge snorted.  They’d recognize a  _ Lilo and Stitch  _ reference anywhere.  “You rotten brother, your butt is crushing me!”  

“Excuse you, my fabulous butt isn’t anywhere near you.”  Lance pretended to be offended.  “Now come on, time for sleep.”  

Pidge let out a heavy sigh.  “Alright, fine.”  They gave up on struggling and settled for just pouting in defeat.  “At least let me turn off my laptop.”  

Lance released them, and they sat up once more to tap a few buttons on their laptop to shut it off before closing it.  The glow of the screen faded, leaving them in darkness aside from the thin strips of emergency lighting near the door.  

“Are you going back to your room?”  Pidge’s voice came out of the darkness next to him.  

“Are you?”  Lance asked.

Another sigh, then “I don’t think so.  I feel restless in there.  I like this room better.”  

Lance knew what they meant.  Their rooms were pretty spartan, really just a place to sleep.  They were small and solitary; a bed and a closet and nothing else.  This room, the one with the couches, was where everyone usually ended up hanging out whenever they weren’t training.  This was where they talked, where they laughed, where they attempted to learn how to play an Altean board game that as far as they could tell was like a cross between Go and Monopoly… This was, for lack of a better word, their family room.  

“I’ll stay out here with you, then.”  Lance said.  “Surrogate sibling sleepover.”  

“You’re such a weirdo.”  Pidge remarked with more fondness than malice, throwing the blanket over both of them.  Lance rolled to lay on his back, and Pidge laid down next to him on their front with their hands balled up under their collarbones like a cat, knees curled up slightly.  A few minutes later, when Lance had nearly drifted off to sleep again, they spoke up.  “Matt and I used to build blanket forts in the living room.  Even when we were in highschool, we’d grab some snacks and a bunch of blankets and pillows, and stay up all night watching alien movies.”

“Now who’s the nerd?”  Lance teased.  

“Still you, nerd.”  Pidge said, lifting their foot to kick him lightly in the knee.  It was hardly a tap, not nearly enough to hurt.  It was more in the spirit of a kick than an actual one.  “What about you?  Do you have any sibling traditions?”  

“Oh yeah, tons.”  Lance smiled at the memories.  

“Like what?”  

“Hmm, well, there’s the Cursed Bunny.”  Lance chuckled.  “It started when my sister Magdalen kicked a soccer ball and broke the ear off this cheesy rabbit lawn decoration in my abuelita’s garden.  She tried to hide it under a flowerpot.  Scared the heck out of my mother when she found it.  And then Luis told her who broke it, and she wasn’t mad, but she put it outside Magdalen’s door so it scared her when she walked out of her room the next morning.  She thought it was me, so she put it outside of  _ my _ door, and I thought it was Carlos, so I put it outside  _ his  _ door, and eventually when we figured out that the thing was not actually possessed and moving itself around the house, we all started taking turns hiding it.  Under the sink, in the pantry, sitting on top of the lawn-mower… one time I put it in the china cabinet with all these old ceramic statues my mother inherited, just poking out behind the Virgin Mary, and people walked past it for  _ months  _ before someone spotted it.”

Pidge giggled.  “That’s certainly a unique family tradition.”  They were quiet for a few moments, then spoke up again.  “I miss my brother.  My whole family too, but Matt and I are so close in age, we’ve always hung out together.  We’re probably each other’s closest friends, always have been.  I didn’t really have a lot of friends in high school, since a couple moved away and most of the rest just sort of grew distant, developed other interests.  But Matt was always there for me.”

Lance nodded.  He knew that feeling well.  “I miss my siblings too.  Especially the younger ones.  My older siblings all went away to college when I was in middle school, so for years it was like I was the oldest in the house.  Helped them with homework, made sure they ate dinner on nights my mom worked late… I even carried Carlos on my back to the hospital once when he fell out of a tree and broke his ankle, because my mom had the car at work that day.”   

Pidge propped their head up on their arm, looking down at Lance.  Their eyes had adjusted to the light just enough to see each other faintly in the dim blue emergency light glow.  “Before, you called this a ‘surrogate sibling sleepover’,” they said.  “Do you want to do that?  Adopt each other as surrogate siblings, until we get back to our families?”

Lance smiled.  “Sure.  I guess when you think about it, it’s sort of like Team Voltron is a kind of family.  Can’t get much closer when you’ve poked around in each other’s head holes.”  

Pidge laughed and laid back down.  “Then it’s settled; we’re adopting each other as siblings.  And we’re adopting everyone else, too.”

“So,” Lance ticked them off on his fingers.  “Shiro’s the eldest brother who looks like a straight-A student but it really a highkey-ready-to-die-after-midterm-exams college student, Keith’s the one who never grew out of his emo teen-angst phase, Hunk’s the golden child who everyone loves, and you’re the genius youngest kid.”

“And you’re the wise-cracker middle child who thinks he’s unimportant, but is really the glue keeping the family together.”  Pidge said seriously.

Lance blinked, then smiled softly.  “Aw, thanks, Pidgey.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“So are we the two siblings that are video game buddies and the meme team?”

“But of course, I thought that was a given.”  Pidge said.

Lance rolled onto his side, grinning mischievously.  “Hey, Pidge, wanna know a secret?”

“Hm?”

“You’re adopted.”  

Pidge snorted.  “You are too, brother dearest.”  

“Gasp, who told you?!”  Lance put his hands on his cheeks in mock surprise.  

“Oh my god, go to sleep, you nerd.”

“Goodnight, Pidge.”

“Night, Lance.”  

~~~~~

Shiro did not know what he was expecting to find when he walked into the room with the couches the next morning, cup of space-coffee and a tablet-book from the library in hand -- for it to be empty, most likely, as it was most mornings -- but this was certainly not it.  

He stopped and stared at the blue and green paladins for a few moments, sleep-fogged brain processing the sight.  They were both on the floor, but Lance had one foot propped up on the couch above him and an arm thrown haphazardly out to the side.  Pidge was on his other side, curled up with their head on Lance’s stomach and hugging their laptop like it was a pillow rather than a chuck of machinery.

“You guys know you have beds, right?”  Shiro asked, raising an eyebrow.  

Lance groaned and tossed an arm over his eyes, clearly not ready to wake up, and Pidge hugged their laptop tighter.  “Shiro, y’r adopted too.”  Lance mumbled.

“Yes, and?”  Shiro didn’t know how they knew that, since he had never mentioned it.  They must have seen it during mental link-up training.

“No, by us.”  Pidge muttered.

Shiro didn’t know what to make of that.  He took a sip of space-coffee, hoping it would help wake him up a bit.  “Then we must have some very convoluted family dynamics, seeing as how I’m a year older than you two.”  

“Don’t question it.”  Lance told him.  “Just accept that we’re all family.”  

“Mmhm,” Pidge agreed sleepily.  

Shiro thought about it.  He kind of liked that idea; the five of them supporting each other like family.  He chuckled and took a seat next to Lance’s foot on the couch, turning on the tablet.  “Okay, then.  Family it is.”   

**Author's Note:**

> The Cursed Bunny is real and lives in a house in Utah. Last I saw it, it was on the dresser of the upstairs bedroom, one-eared and glassy-eyed, watching you while you sleep... a shriek is heard. The Cursed Bunny disappears, for a while, only to re-emerge on the corner of the shower half-hidden behind the curtain... the cycle is endless.


End file.
